Facebook is cooked • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is cooked

#511

Post by mayneack » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:13 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #255

curious_af wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International flight attendant. So the algorithms for people that travel internationally a lot are drastically different from the people who remain stationary. If Facebook wanted to prevent themselves from negative publicity, they might have a different experience for the people who have political power (international travel might be the best proxy for that) What you're referring to may also be part of their XCheck p…

> So the algorithms for people that travel internationally a lot are drastically different from the people who remain stationary. I can confirm the same experience as the parent commenter for my family who still use Facebook even though most of them don't travel internationally. > If Facebook wanted to prevent themselves from negative publicity, they might have a different experience for the people who have political…

I'd be shocked if international travel was the algorithmic tell, but in the book Careless People, the author discusses extensively that they (Facebook's political team) did a lot of manually curating the experience for politicians across the world to help push for Facebook's side in whatever issue was important on a given day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

Re: Facebook is cooked

#512

Post by kube-system » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:15 AM UTC

hobom wrote: post #453

kube-system wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually the scariest part of the article for me. It's clear we've got to the point where at a glance it is hard for those who are otherwise unaware to tell the difference between AI slop and organic content. If nerds on HN can't tell the difference between an AI slop influencer and a fairly well-regarded human influencer... how can we expect the rest of the public to tell the difference when it comes to scie…

The article didn't suggest that the video mentioned was AI slop, it correctly recognised it as human generated.

I know he said it was not AI, but he but still described it as “slop”, lumping it in with the other examples. And said it was a video “where a woman decides to intentionally start a fight with her boyfriend” which isn’t really an accurate description. She’s a well known comedian playing an obviously exaggerated character that pokes fun at relationship dynamics.

My point here isn’t simply that “people can’t differentiate between AI and not AI” (although that is an issue for some) but that the prevalence of AI slop lowers the trust of ALL content even when they know it isn’t AI generated. This author was so fed up with the content they were being served that they were quick to dismiss other content along with it at a cursory glance.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#513

Post by replwoacause » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

I sometimes have to login to the Facebook app to use the marketplace, and my experience is the same as what is written in the article.

I see ragebait, clickbait, AI slop, tons of half-naked young looking girls (some AI, some real), and the marketplace is filled with what looks like obvious prostitution (e.g. beautiful girls selling clothes for like $3, but the clothes seemingly NEVER sell and get posted over and over and over again to the point where it's obvious its just a front for escort services).

It's a veritable cess pool. It should be illegal for any child to use IMO, nothing but pure brainrot.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#514

Post by jedberg » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:18 AM UTC

GreenDolphinSys wrote: post #510

jedberg wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you looking at your feed or the reels? It happens in the reels (and on Instagram if you go the search page, most of the suggested items are thirsty)

That may apply to a vanilla account, but if your account is old, then that's just the kind of stuff you click like on, dwell on, bookmark, etc. We have to consider that these men may not be honest about their activity as well. The search and reels page just shows you what you interact with, and in my experience it tends to overreact to recent input. Look at a couple cat reels for example, and the very next or so refr…

My Facebook account is 21 years old and my Instagram is probably 15 years old.

This problem only started about two years ago. I didn’t change my behavior.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#515

Post by npilk » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:19 AM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #502

Don't know why Linda Dong (yoleendadong) has to catch strays from this post. Her videos are legitimately funny, absolutely not sloppy or bait. Her content is brilliant.

Fair enough - I didn’t turn the sound on for the video. The premise of the sketch seemed to fit the rest of the slimy stuff in the feed, which is why I figured that video in particular got recommended.

I mostly included it because of the absurd question Meta suggested I ask their AI.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#516

Post by replwoacause » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:24 AM UTC

someotherperson wrote: post #475

pwrsysengineer wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I created a Facebook account a few years ago to get in on the local marketplace deals. After opening the website a few times and seeing very suggestive content, I had the idea of tailoring my feed to the most racy things I could find. Eventually, my feed was filled images of children wearing bathing suits and in suggestive positions, censored images of sexual acts, and AI generated images of elderly women with large…

Yeah you should probably delete those photos. Nobody is going to believe your story (myself included).

The part of the story I believe is the part about basically half naked children on Facebook, whether real or AI. I haven't put anything on my profile for the algorithm to tailor content to, since it's used for only marketplace and I've seen some very disturbing content that looked like it slithered off of X. It was as suggestive and inappropriate as you could be about kids, without being full-on porn. And Facebook/Meta seem to have no problem with it. It's a trash heap of a site and everyone involved with it working at Meta should be ashamed.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#517

Post by sodafountan » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

I'm an adult male; my feed is littered with thirst-trap-like posts. I don't even know how or when it got so bad. Instagram is somewhat off, too.

I find myself doomscrolling quite often just out of bad habit.

Wish things were different.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#518

Post by kwanbix » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:33 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #204

> So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm? No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago. Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed.…

Facebook changes to be more like TikTok. Content to generate addiction so they can sell more adds.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#519

Post by trueno » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:36 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #220

efilife wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not fake. I've also seen these and checked commenters' profiles. Real people, in the 35-50 age range.

How can you tell by just looking at their profile? Bots have for over a decade been able to generate a profile with a real looking picture (usually just scraped from the web) and a realistic sounding bio.

yea im surprised i see so many times that people on _hackernews_ are convinced profile activity is real.

theres entire marketing companies that provide what is effectively a botnet of social media activity to generate buzz, promising packages with "social media engagement". disney uses these to try and hype movie trailers, when the recent tron trailer came out it took 1 minute for a bunch of comments that looked like seemingly real enough accounts to be in there posting "im not ready for this" "omg" etc. and yes, these networks of fake accounts on all social media platforms do have non-vacant profiles meaning theyve got comments and stuff all over each others pages. there was a recent smaller production that is suing their marketing agency which promised this deceptive engagement and their implementation shit the bed and all the bots just interacted amongst themselves on the movies instagram page. the movie completely tanked at the box office because they never got their fake accounts to start engaging outside of the movies instagram account.

everyone focuses on the actual content itself as the subject of AI platform abuse, but are we really so naive to think that the companies pouring millions of dollars into these efforts are too stupid to understand that controlling the narrative involves requires simulating human feedback?

its in our nature to want to "go to the comments" to "get the real tea" and. im just going to say right now that yeah, the entities deploying these types of accounts are well aware that that is how many of us look for perspective. they're not stupid, and it's easier than it's ever been to game commentary in 2026.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#520

Post by KPGv2 » Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 4:36 AM UTC

mbo wrote: post #202

My mother is an international flight attendant in her 60s. I recently caught a glimpse of her Facebook and I was shocked to discover a version of the website that seemed to be the platonic ideal of exactly what all the Facebook PMs intended. Her feed was filled with the photos of her friends and coworkers international trips and holidays, posts in groups for planning activities in her most frequented cities. But I di…

For the longest time, that was my feed, well after most Millennials had moved on. It was spectacular.

But I finally decided I didn't want to doom scroll so much, and when I changed phones, I declined to install the app on my new one, and I logged out on my laptop.

So I almost never am on anymore, and it's always complete trash. Zuck's Trump turn helped the inertia, and now with the revelations that he was trying to party with Epstein how can I even log in anymore?

I think I'm going to reach out to the people who matter and get their email addresses, then hang my FB shoes up for good, twenty-one years after I joined.